


the flower trying to bloom in snow

by Solanaceae



Category: Dungeons & Dragons - All Media Types
Genre: Animal Death, Faerun (Location), Gen, Minor Character Death, brief descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-16 18:25:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15443109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/pseuds/Solanaceae
Summary: Dea grows up in the forest, and for years does not know there is a world beyond the shaded green and fresh smell of pine needles that make up her home. She can’t imagine what more there could be—the trees and the sky and the singing of the clear streams are more than enough for her, and the woods hold more than she thinks she can explore in a lifetime.Something lost and something gained, or somewhat of an origin story.





	the flower trying to bloom in snow

Dea grows up in the forest, and for years does not know there is a world beyond the shaded green and fresh smell of pine needles that make up her home. She can’t imagine what more there  _ could  _ be—the trees and the sky and the singing of the clear streams are more than enough for her, and the woods hold more than she thinks she can explore in a lifetime.

Later, she learns that her forest, the Moonwood, is tiny compared to the vastness of the continent of Faerûn, let alone the entire planet, let alone everything  _ beyond _ Toril. But to a child, it seems vaster than her imagination.

She spends her youth among a small clan of other gnomes. Her family is the largest, with five children, so she does not lack for others to play with. She learns the ways of the forest, how to fade into the undergrowth to avoid predators, how to step lightly amid fallen leaves. These are games, to her and the others, but they are games that can mean the difference between life and death in the forest.

***

Jali, her only sister, is six years older than her. They have the same dark green leaves-at-dusk eyes, the same coppery hair, and Dea styles hers after her sister’s—a tight and simple braid against her head, trailing down the back of her neck. From the moment she can walk, Dea is Jali’s shadow, following her wherever she goes. Jali is patient with her, puts up with her incessant questions and lets her help with the experiments she always has going. Jali wants to be an alchemist, she tells Dea over and over, the best alchemist in the whole forest, and that means she has to practice.

Dea isn’t sure what that means, besides that Jali always smells like strange things and has scorch marks on all her clothing from experiments gone wrong. She does know that whatever her sister ends up doing, she wants to be there to help. She imagines everyone in the clan thinking of them as more than just the Lurei sisters, but as innovators, as leaders.

Well. Her sister, more than her, because even at such a young age, she knows that she herself is nothing special. She doesn’t mind. Jali shines bright enough for both of them.

***

She is seven when she learns what death looks like.

Wix and Wex, her twin younger brothers, are three years old and—as their mother says often— _ absolute terrors _ . They bring home an injured blackbird fledgling one day, its left wing flapping uselessly, and Dea confiscates it from them before they can hurt it any further. She nurses it back to health—the wing is permanently broken, but it can hop around just fine, and it takes to sitting on her shoulder. She names it Mym.

“Don’t get too attached,” her older brother warns her. Nimen is eight years older than her and likes to act like he is fifty years wiser. Dea sticks her tongue out at him and goes back to feeding Mym seeds from the palm of her hand.

There’s a thunderstorm one night, and she huddles with Mym cupped in her hands, focusing on the flutter of the bird’s heart to block out the roaring thunder. She falls asleep like that, curled around the bird, and when she wakes in the morning to watery dawn light, Mym is still and cold beside her.

She runs to her mother, begging her to make Mym better, then to Jali to see if her sister can come up with a miracle to bring the bird back to life.

Her sister takes one look at the limp bundle of feathers and shakes her head. “Dea, I can’t do anything.”

“You have to,” Dea says, and though she has not cried since waking up, now she feels the hot prick of tears in her eyes. “Jali, you  _ have _ to—”

Jali turns toward her workbench, and for a wild moment Dea thinks that her sister will come back with something that will bring Mym back to life. Instead, Jali hands her a piece of blue cloth, torn from something larger, with bits of green embroidery on one edge.

“Bury it in this,” she suggests.

Her control over her emotions, already as fragile as a cobweb, breaks. Dea takes the cloth and goes back outside, the tears now falling heavy down her cheeks. She scrubs the back of her hand across her eyes, chest hitching with sobs, then turns and runs into the woods.

She buries Mym at the base of the biggest pine tree she can find. Maybe the bird’s spirit will travel up the roots and into the branches and fly for the first time, she thinks.

***

The Moonwood echoes with sound at all times—the sigh of the wind through pine branches, the calls of birds, the whisper of animal footfalls. In the winter, a layer of snow muffles everything, but the cold has its sounds as well: the aching creak of branches under the weight of frost, the silver noise of water moving under the river ice. Dea learns the music of the forest that lulls her to sleep at night. The clan’s clearing has its own music, too: cheerful talk, laughter, the sounds of crafting.

By the time Dea is thirteen, Jali’s work has co-opted almost half the house. Her alchemy has helped the clan greatly, giving them solvents and acids that can drive away even the biggest wolves, and so the least their parents can do is give their prodigy daughter enough space to work her wonders.

Dea falls asleep in Jali’s main workroom one afternoon and wakes to the acrid smell of smoke mingled with something bitter that sets her nerves on edge. She sits up, calls out, “Jali?”

When she hears no reply, she stands. There’s a haze in the air, she realizes, tinted green. In the corner, one of Jali’s tall containers sends emerald sparks into the air, a thick fog bubbling out of it to collect near the ground. She inhales, tastes the strange smoke at the back of her throat. Her head swims, and when she looks down at her hands, they do not seem to belong to her. Jali has experiments running all the time, little bowls of bubbling liquids and vats that steam, but this feels different. Dangerous. She should go get her sister—

There’s a flash of light, and then a concussive burst of force, and the world whites out.

***

When she wakes, it is dawn.

She’s standing in the middle of the clan’s clearing, and everything is eerily still. No laughter, no birdsong. Even the air hangs heavy and cold, and when she exhales a silver cloud of breath, it is startlingly loud.

“Hello?” she calls. “Jali?”

No response comes. She can feel her heartbeat in her throat, making it hard to breathe. Maybe, she thinks, it is a prank, maybe everyone is hiding and waiting to jump out and scare her, and then they will all laugh. That must be it.

She turns and sees the first body.

Lan is an elderly gnome, a great-grandfather who whittles toys for the children of the clan in his free time. His face, normally cheerful, is fixed in a wide-eyed expression of fear, his white beard matted with blood from the gaping wound in his chest.

Dea’s heart stutters. She raises a hand to cover her mouth, then looks down to see blood on her own fingers. She stares at them for a moment, uncomprehending, then looks back at Lan’s body.

“No,” she says aloud, as though that will make it all go away, “ _ no _ , this is—this is a dream.”

The painful thud of her heart under her collarbone tells her it is not, but she turns toward her house regardless, determined to make some sense of this all. As she approaches, she sees the back of the house where Jali’s workspace is has been blown out, the wooden beams charred black. She stays away from that, though, and approaches the front of the house instead. The door hangs ajar, the weak dawn sun casting a bar of light into the darkened room beyond.

Dea goes in.

She finds the twins first, curled up in their beds as though asleep. She shakes Wix, then Wex, then breaks down crying, tears wetting the dark stains on her hands that she tries not to look at.

Her parents’ bedroom is spattered in blood, but she sees enough to know that both of them are dead. (She throws up at the smell of iron in the air and the brown-red of dried blood, and staggers away, sobbing.) Try as she might, though, she cannot find either Jali or Nimen. Not in the house, and not outside in the clearing, either. She finds a handful of other dead—clan members, some with unmarked bodies and some with horrific wounds. Not enough to account for the entire clan, though.

She is the only one alive, and her hands are bloody, and the full horror of what that implies hovers over her head like a storm cloud, threatening to break open.

***

She leaves the empty clearing and pushes deeper into the forest, walking for days in a haze. When night falls, she curls up into a shivering ball under bushes or amid tree roots, to be gone before sunrise. It’s early winter, and cold, but she had the presence of mind to grab a blanket from her house before fleeing, which is just enough to keep her from freezing to death.

She doesn’t know where she’s going except  _ away _ , as far away as possible.

She’s in a completely unfamiliar part of the wood, kneeling by a half-frozen stream and scooping cold water half-heartedly into her mouth with still-bloodstained hands when she feels a sense of clarity pierce through the fog in her mind.

So. She’s alone now, and even if Jali and Nimen are still alive, they would not want to see her now, not if she has done what she thinks—is  _ sure _ she has done.

But she’s here. She’s alive.

She scrubs her hands in the stream, washing the blood downstream, then dries them on her pants. She might not be the smartest or strongest, and she might be a murderer, but she more or less knows how to find food and hunt, so she might as well survive.

(And stay alone. It’s best if she keeps away from any other people, which shouldn’t be hard in the depths of the forest. She doesn’t know what happened, and she is not willing to risk it happening again.)

She exhales, then stands up. A squirrel on a branch over the stream pauses to look at her, its black eyes gleaming.

“Do you think it was my fault?” she asks it, and it scampers away.

***

She stays on the move, never lingering long in any one place, and as a result, ends up in parts of the Moonwood she has never even heard of.

It’s sundown on a summer evening several years later when she stumbles across the ruin in the middle of the forest. The building doesn’t look like much—a tower, two stories high, made of crumbling stone. It glints strangely in the setting sun, though, and as she draws closer, she can see metal embedded in the bricks, irregular shards that catch the golden light. There’s no clear pattern to them, but it’s certainly a strange thing to find in the woods.

Still, it’s a place to spend the night, and take shelter in—even in the summer, nights get chilly, and it’s always nice to have some cover from the winds.

The doorway is low enough that she could reach up and touch it if she wanted, another strange feature—perhaps it was built by gnomes. (And that stirs a memory she has not touched in years, of days in the sun with her family, her sister’s laughter, the togetherness of life as part of a whole. She pushes the thought away.) The air inside is dry, with a strangely sweet smell. Ivy grows up the walls both inside and out, and there’s a young sapling forcing its way between two floorstones. Whatever this place is, it has not been inhabited in a very long time.

She finds the stairs by accident. One moment she is walking toward the window, the next the floor has given way and she is stuck to the knee in what looks like an old, rotten wooden trapdoor. With some effort, she manages to pull free, then squats to look down into the hole she has kicked in it. Stone steps wind down out of sight, and though the light outside is swiftly fading, she can see them because the stairs are set with the same flecks of metal as the outside walls, except that these seem to glow faintly.

She tears at the rest of the wood—it’s soft, and gives way easily under her hands—until she can fit through. The illumination from the stairs seems to brighten as she takes one step down, then another, the stairwell curving until she has descended far enough to lose sight of the trapdoor.

The stairs continue down for a long time, but the light never changes. The sweet smell grows stronger the deeper she goes, until it is nearly overpowering. Eventually, the stairs flatten out into a chamber just barely taller than she is. It’s made of the same stone as the rest, but without metal flecks. There’s a circle of the glowing metal in the center of the room, though, and as she approaches, it seems to brighten.

_ Dea Adanel Lurei.  _ The voice is deep and reverberates in a way that makes her bones shake—later, when she hears a bell being tolled for the first time, she is reminded of this thrumming voice.

“Who—” Her tongue darts out to wet her lips. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”

_ I know you, and your desires, and your regrets. Come closer. _

She takes a hesitant step forward. “That’s impossible. You don’t know anything about me.” She’s starting to think she should have stayed upstairs.

This time, she feels it brush against her mind, a feather-light touch that sends chills racing over her skin. Unbidden, the smell of blood rises in her memory, bitter iron and terror.

_ You yearn. What do you yearn for, Dea? _

“Get out of my head,” she says, voice trembling.

_ You want to be part of a family again _ , the voice says, and she cannot help herself—tears rise in her eyes, spill over her cheeks in a silent betrayal. She’s seventeen (by her best estimate), but for a moment she feels seven again, chest aching with a strange new sensation called loss.  _ You’re lonely. You hold regret in your heart. You want a family— _

Dea turns and rushes blindly up the stairs, tears blurring her vision. She stumbles several times, bruising her legs on the stone, but does not stop even when she reaches ground level. It is only once she is gasping for breath and out of sight of the tower that she slows to a halt, bracing her hands on her knees and panting.

She steers clear of that part of the forest from then on.

***

She’s about twenty three years old (it’s hard to keep track of time in the forest) when she encounters the band of orcs. She goes to the edge of the forest sometimes, more by virtue of the fact that she tries to keep moving than any desire to leave, and it’s there amid the sparser trees that she hears the heavy tread of booted feet, clumsy and loud in the suddenly quiet forest, followed by short, guttural shouts in a language she does not recognize.

Dea shrinks into the shadows, pressing her back against a tree, digging her nails into the bark and biting her tongue. Her heartbeat thuds in her ears, and her breathing is so loud she is sure the entire forest can hear it. The footsteps come closer, and she screws her eyes shut, praying they will pass by.

“What’s this?”

She opens her eyes. An orc peers down at Dea, her green face scarred, a massive club with iron spikes in one hand. Four more orcs approach, encircling the tree.

“Huh,” the first orc says as she leers at Dea. She looks like the leader of the group, and is the biggest, at least three times Dea’s size. She smells of unwashed feet and dried blood. “A lil’ gnome, all alone in the woods?”

“The rest of ‘em must be near,” another orc snarls, spitting off to the side. He’s got a jagged-edged sword in one hand, the blade streaked with black. “They don’t live alone.”

“Well?” The leader leans down, her breath a fetid gust around Dea’s face. Dea wrinkles her nose and tries to push back further into the tree, hoping it might swallow her into its bark. “Where’s the rest of your family, little one?”

It’s the  _ little one _ that gets through the fear, a spark of anger rising and making her face flush hot. She’s small, to be sure, but she’s no  _ child _ . “I haven’t got a family,” she snaps. “It’s just me.”

The leader makes a noise of surprise, and then the head of her club strikes the ground next to Dea in a puff of dust and leaf bits. Dea can’t help the shriek that escapes her mouth. The orc leans on the club, sallow eyes narrowed.

“We need to get a move on,” she says, and it takes Dea a moment to realize she’s talking to the other orcs. “Can’t leave anyone to tell that bitch where we went.”

“I can take care of her,” the orc with the sword grunts, stepping forward and raising his blade. Dea freezes, mind going blank save for the realization that this is it, she’s going to die, she’s going to  _ die— _

A flash of brilliant light shatters the air. Dea’s eyes widen as a column of white fire slams into the earth, catching three of the five orcs in its blinding brilliance. Their screams cut off as the flames disappear, leaving a charred circle of ground and three smoking corpses.

“By Gruumsh’s missing  _ fucking  _ eye,” the leader shouts, whirling around with her club raised.

A half-elf steps out from the trees. She wears a long, dark purple cloak with a hood that she lifts to reveal dark skin, braided red hair, and piercing blue eyes. A large silver amulet hangs from a chain around her neck, glowing slightly, and a shimmering, light purple sword floats at her side, flickering in and out of existence.

“Step away from the gnome,” she calls.

The orc with the sword grabs Dea’s upper arm in a vise-like grip and pulls her against his body, pressing his sword to her throat. “One step closer and her head comes off.”

The half-elf stops and sighs, raising a hand. “I don’t negotiate with heathens.” She spreads her fingers, and Dea feels the orc’s body stiffen, muscles trembling as he tries to draw the blade across her throat but is met by some unrelenting force.

The orc leader rushes forward with a yell, spiked club raised. The half-elf steps to the side at the last moment, cloak whipping out of the way, and the club impacts the ground with a loud noise. At the same moment, the phantom weapon whips forward, past the orc leader, hurtling toward the orc that holds Dea. Dea has only enough time to draw in a surprised breath before the blade cleaves the orc’s hand from his arm, stopping just short of slicing into Dea’s shoulder. The bloodstained sword—along with the hand that had held it—thuds to the ground.

Dea stumbles away just as whatever spell had held the orc in place vanishes. He staggers, gasping, blood pouring from the stump of his wrist, then looks up and locks eyes with Dea. “You,” he shouts, spittle flying from his mouth. “You’ll pay for this—”

The orc leader and the half-elf are trading blows now, the occasional flash of light punctuating the orc’s snarled battle cries. Dea has nothing except the tiny bone knife she uses to skin animals, which is likely not even able to pierce the orc’s thick hide. She bends to grab the orc’s discarded sword, suppressing a shiver of disgust as the severed hand slips limply from its hilt to fall back to the ground. It’s heavy enough that her arms shake as she lifts it, the tip wavering as she points it at the orc. There’s no way she could swing it hard enough to do any damage. She’s too weak, and they both know it.

“Stay back.” She means the words as a warning, but they come out in a quivering, frightened voice. The orc barks a laugh.

“Give me back my fucking sword.” He comes at her, drawing a dagger as he does so. She takes a step back, then another, keeping the sword between them.

The orc charges, and Dea swings wildly, putting all her weight behind it. She misjudges the timing, though, and the orc easily sidesteps it before plunging his dagger into Dea’s chest.

The worst pain she has ever felt in her life was when she was three and put her palm against the hot iron cooking pot, leaving an angry red burn that gave her blisters for a week. This is like that, but multiplied by ten, so much pain that she can’t even get a scream out past it. The sword falls from her hands and she unthinkingly reaches for the dagger in her chest as though she can wrench the pain out along with it. The orc pulls it out just as she grabs at it, slashing twin lines of fire across her palms.

He raises the dagger again, then stumbles. A shimmering purple blade grows from his chest, the half-elf’s phantom weapon impaling him. He lets out a gurgle and slumps to the ground.

Dea falls to her knees, gasping, the taste of metal rising in her throat. There’s a wetness spreading across her chest, and she looks down to see a dark stain blossoming across the front of her shirt. Then she is on her back in the leaf litter, entire body trembling, feeling like a fire has been lit on her chest. She hears footsteps, then sees dark purple. The half-elf kneels down, pressing her hands to either side of the wound in Dea’s chest. A feeling of warmth sweeps away the pain, spreading from her torso to every inch of her body, and she watches as the cuts in her palm knit back together into unmarked skin.

The half-elf helps her sit up. “Don’t move too quickly,” she tells her, voice gentle. “I’m Sylvain Redroot, by the way.”

“Dea,” she says, then: “How did you  _ do  _ that?”

Sylvain’s brow crinkles. “Do what?”

“The—the—” She waves her fingers. “The fire, and then healing me.”

“Ah.” Sylvain smiles. “The power of the goddess Valterra flows through me.”

“Can I learn how to do that?” Dea blurts out. Sylvain laughs, but it is a sound of gentle surprise rather than ridicule.

“Perhaps someday you will be blessed as well. For now, is there a home I can escort you back to?”

Dea shakes her head. “I’m not—I live alone.” She expects Sylvain to react with surprise or suspicion, but the half-elf only nods.

“Then would you like to join me for a time? I have set up camp nearby, and would appreciate having someone to guide me in this forest.”

Dea nods. “I can do that.”

***

Days turn to weeks, and Sylvain shows no sign of wanting to move on. Dea doesn’t mind—even if she knows it is safer for her to be alone, there is a lonely part of her she was not aware of until she met another person. Every night, Sylvain tells her stories about her travels in the world, about her goddess, and Dea soaks up every word.

She knows that she cannot escape her memories, though, and so it is not really a surprise when their fireside conversation turns to her own past.

“Were you born here?” Sylvain asks, prodding the coals with a stick. The warmth from the fire makes the skin of Dea’s face feel tight. “You know your way around the forest so well.”

“I’ve lived here all my life.”

“And your family—where is your family?”

She opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. Sylvain tilts her head to one side.

“Is something wrong?”

Dea swallows, then manages to say, “They’re dead.”

“What happened?” Sylvain asks, and the half-elf’s voice is unbearably gentle, her eyes full of a concern that makes Dea’s stomach twist.

So Dea opens her mouth and the truth spills out, a rush of panic and blood and every mistake she made to bring herself here. The explosion. Waking up alone in a clearing full of dead bodies. The years alone in the forest, wondering what she had done, terrified of doing it again. When she finishes, she meets Sylvain’s eyes. The half-elf’s face is unreadable.

“I understand if you want to leave me,” Dea forces out. “I would leave.”

Sylvain reaches out, hand closing around Dea’s shoulder. “I’m not leaving you,” she says, then pulls Dea forward into an embrace.

***

Sylvain stays in the Moonwood for nearly a year, and when it comes time for her to go, Dea begs to be taken along. It doesn’t take much convincing. As much as she has started to see Sylvain as something like a mother or an older sister, she suspects that Sylvain feels a similar fondness toward her. She’s been teaching Dea how to fight, too, or at least the basics of defending herself, almost as if she were hoping that Dea would leave with her.

They travel south through falling snow to Silverymoon, the first habitation outside the forest Dea has ever seen. She’s met people outside her clan before, mostly elves and half-elves who also live in the Moonwood that Jali would trade with for alchemy supplies, but she never dreamed that there were so many different kinds of people in the world. They pass through Silverymoon’s market, and she keeps close to Sylvain, dazzled by the colors, disoriented by the scents and noise. Everyone is talking, shouting, singing—it’s louder than her clan’s clearing ever was. And the  _ food _ , glistening fruit piled up on stalls and smoked meats hanging from hooks, she’s never _ seen _ so much food in her life.

“Is every city this big?” she asks.

“Many are smaller, but some are far bigger, if you can imagine that. This is quiet for the market, too. It’s far busier in the summer.”

Sylvain takes her into a shop with weapon-lined walls and buys her a dagger, keen steel with a white bone handle. It’s in Silverymoon that she first sees Sylvain in action as a cleric of Valterra doing more than killing the followers of evil gods. The half-elf has explained some of this to her: her goal is to turn others away from their gods, to incite heresy or eliminate worship. So Dea follows her to one of the temples, and watches how Sylvain weaves her words and confuses the acolytes as deftly as she slaughtered the orcs when they first met.

They sleep in an inn that night, the first time Dea has been in a bed since she was thirteen. It’s almost too comfortable, everything too soft for her to fall asleep, so she lies awake and watches the snow pile up against the glass of the window, white and silent.

***

If Silverymoon felt large, Waterdeep is impossibly massive. Even after months spent on the road with Sylvain, headed down the road toward the coast, nothing could have prepared Dea for the sheer immensity of the port city. In a strange way, it reminds her of the forest, only all the trees here are stone buildings, stretching high above her, and the streets flow with people instead of water.

She follows Sylvain, as she always does, but somewhere between pausing to look at a dancer on a street corner and turning back to continue after Sylvain, she loses track of the half-elf. Nervous, she tries to look around, but everyone is so much taller than her, and they keep bumping into her, knocking her from side to side.

“Sylvain?” she calls. The noise of the crowd drowns her out. “Sylvain!”

She pushes forward, shouldering her way between bodies, fighting past people who barely even glance at the small, panicking gnome. It’s easy to get turned around, and when she finally fights free of the crowd and stumbles out onto a quieter side street, she has no idea where she is.

She keeps walking, and the streets grow more and more empty. This can’t be where Sylvain went, but she knows the half-elf is likely headed toward the temples. If she can figure out where those are, she’ll find Sylvain.

Several hours later, her throat burning with thirst and her feet aching, she draws to a halt at a street corner. She rises on her tip-toes to try to read the street sign—why do they put them so  _ high _ ?—and does not notice the two humans approaching until they are right on top of her.

“Hey, sweetcake, you lost?”

She turns. Two men stand behind her. One is heavyset and has a large beard, and the other is lithe, with an unsettling gleam in his eyes. She has to crane her neck to look up at their faces.

“I’m not lost,” she says.

“Doesn’t look that way to me,” the thinner one says, taking a step closer. His voice is raspy. “It’d be a pity if something happened to a little girl like you, wouldn’t it?”

She swallows back her automatic  _ I’m not a little girl _ and instead says, “I can take care of myself.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” the bearded one says. “But wouldn’t you like us to take care of you, too?”

She looks around. The street is empty except for them. For a moment, she considers running, but their legs are so much longer than hers. “I don’t need your help.”

The bearded one reaches for her arm, and she stumbles back. Belatedly, she remembers the dagger Sylvain gave her, tucked in her boot. Her heart rate picks up, her chest tightening, and this is the worst time to panic but she can’t  _ control  _ it, she' can’t—

“Come on, darling,” he says, reaching again, and before she can think, she draws her dagger and slashes a shallow wound across his palm with the same movement. He lets out a snarl of pain, clutching at his hand, before glaring at her. “That was a  _ mistake _ , sweetcake.”

Dea turns and sprints away. The sound of feet pounding on the pavement follows her, getting closer.

She glances over her shoulder as she rounds a corner, runs straight into a cloaked figure, and looks up to see familiar blue eyes filled with concern.

“Dea?”

She lets out a sob of relief and throws her arms around Sylvain. The footsteps behind her slow as they approach, the men growing hesitant at the sight of the half-elf.

“Are these people giving you trouble?” Sylvain asks, voice pitched so the men can hear it as well.

Dea nods.

“The little bitch knifed me,” the bearded man spits, holding up his palm.

There’s a faint hum as Sylvain’s phantom blade manifests in the air beside her. “Be glad I was not there,” she says, voice all ice. “You would have more than a scratch.”

Dea watches fear turn the men’s faces pale. They back away, then turn around, picking up speed until they are almost running. Sylvain does not dismiss the sword until they have disappeared.

“Are you harmed?” she asks Dea, kneeling down to her level and using two fingers to lift her chin and inspect her. Dea shakes her head.

“I just got scared.” She means for it to come out as a self-deprecating quip, but her voice breaks.

“Understandable,” Sylvain murmurs. She stands and offers Dea a hand. “Stay close, now.”

***

They continue south to Daggerford, then follow the river inland, visiting towns along the way. Eventually, they end up in a mining village called Llorkh. Sylvain gets the note on their second day in the village, a request from a priest of Deneir named Orfar to visit him.

“It seems our reputation has preceded us,” Sylvain says once she has read the note, and Dea feels a flush of warmth at the  _ us _ . “Well. At least it saves the trouble of hunting him down, no?”

They go to the agreed meeting place the next evening, a small garden mostly covered in snow. Winters here are not quite as brutal as they are further north, but it is still cold, and Dea shifts from foot to foot as they wait for the priest to arrive. Sylvain shows no signs of being affected by the chill.

The minutes stretch on until Dea starts to wonder if the priest is going to show up. She opens her mouth to ask Sylvain what they should do, then shuts it at the sound of footsteps—more than one set of footsteps.

A group of armored humans round the corner, blades out. The leader of them draws to a halt at the sight of them, pointing his spear at them. “Sylvain Redroot,” he calls.

“Correct,” Sylvain says. “Where is Orfar?”

“He deems you an annoyance, but not enough to warrant personal attention.” The other thugs spread out, circling them, and Dea moves closer to Sylvain, hand creeping toward the dagger at her belt. “You are accused of spreading unrest and heresy. You may surrender now, and we will take you to the stockade.”

Sylvain’s hands flash up and a familiar column of fire slams down, catching several of the men in its radius. They are too spread out, though, and as the flames clear, leaving a hissing circle of melted snow, at least ten thugs begin advancing on them, blades out.

“Dea, run,” Sylvain hisses.

“But you need—”

“ _ Go _ ,” she says, and there is a humming power in her voice that washes over Dea, who feels her limbs move without her conscious direction. She turns and runs deeper into the garden, unable to look back.

By the time the spell wears off, she is far into the garden, face red and throat seared by the cold air. She can hear the noise of blades clashing and the occasional yell from behind her.

She returns in time to see Sylvain being pushed back toward the wall, purple blade a blur as she parries the strikes of the thugs. The half-elf bleeds from wounds in her chest and legs, dark red splashing the snow as she backs up. Bodies litter the ground, but she still has two thugs pressing her back.

Sylvain takes one step too far back and hits the wall, losing her balance for a moment. One thug slams into her shoulder with his spear, pinning her to the bricks, and at the same moment, the leader swings his sword at her leg, cleaving it off just above the knee.

Dea screams. Sylvain slumps against the wall, chest heaving. The snow beneath her is bright red. Her weapon cuts down one of the thugs, then flickers out of existence.

The leader raises his sword again. “Should’ve just surrendered,” he spits.

Dea moves forward before she can think better of it, closing the distance between them and stabbing forward with her dagger. She catches the blade between two pieces of leather on the man’s arm, and he lashes out at her, knocking her backwards. She lands on her back, snow slipping up the back of her shirt, dagger flying out of her hands.

“I’ll deal with you once I’ve taken care of your teacher,” he says roughly, and lifts the sword to Sylvain’s throat.

Sylvain’s hand flashes up and closes around his wrist, trying to push him away. He laughs, then makes a choked off noise. From where Sylvain’s hand touches the man’s skin, gray spreads, eating away at the thug’s flesh. He wrenches free and staggers back, but the damage continues.

When he falls to the ground, twitching, Dea stands and hurries over to Sylvain, who has pulled free of the spear and sits slumped against the wall. Blood trickles from the corner of her mouth, and there’s a rattling noise in her lungs as she breathes. Dea kneels beside her, searching for something she can use to tie off Sylvain’s leg with, to staunch the bleeding.

“Take the amulet,” Sylvain gasps out.

Dea blinks, confused. “What?”

“The amulet. Take it off me.”

Dea lifts the chain over the half-elf’s head. “What do I—”

“Put it on.” Sylvain’s eyelids flicker, then open again, her gaze fixing on Dea’s face. “I have no more strength to cast spells. You need to do this.”

Dea drapes it around her neck. The chain is still warm from Sylvain’s skin, the amulet heavy against her chest. Sylvain grabs Dea’s hands, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise.

“Valterra,” the half-elf says, then lapses into dwarvish, a string of words so quick that Dea can barely follow. The few words she catches— _ bless, strengthen, transfer _ —are the ones that are repeated over and over.

Sylvain’s voice is fading in strength by the time she finishes. Dea waits for the familiar sight of Valterra’s power healing the half-elf, but nothing happens.

“Put one hand on the amulet and the other here,” Sylvain says, bloodslicked hands shaking as she guides Dea’s hand to the stump of her knee. “And concentrate. Ask Valterra to show her power through you.”

She frowns and reaches out, thinking as hard as she can,  _ Valterra, please. Please, I don’t want her to die. _

A taste of blackberries, heavy in her throat, and the sharp scent of mint. A warm feeling that suffuses her entire body, spreading from where the amulet rests against her chest. Her eyes widen as the bleeding slows, then stops, flesh melding back together. Sylvain lets out a long breath, face no longer death-pale, and releases Dea’s hand. There’s an unreadable emotion in her eyes.

“We need to leave this city,” she tells Dea.

***

With the bleeding stopped, Sylvain is able to more or less hobble along with the help of a staff that Dea finds. They go down to the river and secure passage on a cargo ship, Sylvain doing most of the talking while Dea holds her upright, and they leave Llorkh before the next dawn. They have to move quickly, because Orfar is sure to send others after them once he learns that his ambush failed.

The ship takes them down the river and out to the sea. It docks and spends several weeks at a few cities—Daggerford, Waterdeep, Neverwinter. Dea stays onboard, because the sight of the crowded streets and closely packed buildings makes her heart race and her throat close up. Sylvain is surely getting tired of staying in the small room they have been allotted, but she does not complain. By now, her wounds have closed, but she still has no left leg, and there is some kind of internal damage that makes her too weak to walk for long periods of time. Dea has tried to heal her many times, but the remaining damage seems beyond her power to help.

Her new power is unfamiliar to her. At first, she assumes it is temporary, that Sylvain will recover fully and take her amulet back. But as time passes, it becomes clear that Sylvain is permanently crippled, and Dea has these powers for better or for worse.

She spends hours in the room they stay in, brow furrowed with concentration as Sylvain points to different objects for her to wreathe in light purple radiance that flickers like flames.  

“You’re getting better at this,” Sylvain tells her.

Not better enough to heal you, she thinks. But she nods and redoubles her efforts, straining to reach the strange warmth that wells up inside her when she calls it.

They leave the ship at Luskan, many miles north and west of Llorkh. Sylvain wants to push further north still, to Icewind Dale, where she says there is a collection of small towns that they can hide in.

“Will we be safe there?” Dea asks as she helps Sylvain down from the gangway. Sylvain lets out a long breath, leaning on Dea for support.

“As safe as we can be.” She looks down at her. “I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to leave me there and go off on your own, you know. I’m not much use to anyone like this.”

Dea shakes her head, gripping Sylvain’s hand tighter. “I’m not leaving you.”

 


End file.
